Ecstasy
From: Tuesday, 12th April 2011
To: Saturday, 28 May 2011
Our Review: 
Your Reviews:
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Synopsis
After selling out before opening, and receiving an outstanding critical reception at Hampstead Theatre, Mike Leigh’s new production of his 1979 play Ecstasy transfers to The Duchess for 50 performances only.
If you can't have a laugh and a drink on a Friday night, when can you? Loneliness, togetherness, longing, warmth, love... Ecstasy is compassionate, thoughtful and extremely funny. It centres on a group of old friends who come together in a Kilburn bed-sit, with the Winter of Discontent just over and Margaret Thatcher’s regime about to transform the country.
The cast features Sinead Matthews (who has worked with Leigh on the films Vera Drake and Happy-Go-Lucky), Sian Brooke,Daniel Coonan, Claire-Louise Cordwell, Allen Leech and Craig Parkinson.
Ecstasy which originally premiered at Hampstead in 1979, marks the first time that the theatre and filmmaker Leigh has returned to one of his works. Leigh is best known for his films, including Happy-Go-Lucky, Vera Drake (winner of the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival), Topsy-Turvy and Secrets & Lies (winner of the Palm d'Or at Cannes Film Festival). His relationship with Hampstead Theatre started with his renowned Abigail's Party which premiered in 1977, followed by Ecstasy, Goose-Pimples and Smelling a Rat. His most recent play, Two Thousand Years, was a sell-out success at the National Theatre in 2008
Our Review:
Nancy Groves - 14 April 2011
I have never seen a play quite like it. Yet Mike Leigh’s Ecstasy, like the best of his films, could not be more grounded in life’s realities. Revived at Hampstead Theatre where it first played three decades ago and now transferred to the West End, it demands from its audience and delivers in equal measure, bleak, seemingly interminable, but ultimately beautiful in its own way.
The year is 1979, the place a dingy bedsit off the Kilburn High Road, home to Brummie Jean, who is friends with Dawn, who is married to Mick, who is a former colleague of Len. Fuelled by cigarettes, alcohol and song, nothing about these four young people’s lives is notable, except their humanity, which Hampstead’s superb cast bring home with each verbal tic and physical stumble along the way.
Originally devised in the writer-director’s loose collaborative style, Ecstasy nevertheless largely observes Aristotlean unities of ...
Latest User Review
ajh - 4 May 2011:
Wouldn't recommend this to somebody who was feeling a bit low!! It is however a grimly brilliant dissection of hopeless urban lives and loneliness. It is extraordinary how the minutae of an ordinary existence can become so compelling, and there are, as always with Mike Leigh's best work, some wonderful belly laughs. Cannot praise the cast highly enough: all of them give committed, fearless, truthful performances entirely without vanity. Quite extraordinary. Sian Brooke is hearbreaking, and Sinead Matthews sensational, but it is an amazing ensemble effort. Highly recommended. ...
Creative
Mike Leigh (Author)
Hampstead Theatre (Producer)
Mike Leigh (Director)
Alison Chitty (Design)
Paul Pyant (Lighting)
John Leonard (Sound)
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